“What gnaws at the guts of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile?” a colleague asked during a journalists’ lunch on Saturday, Feb. 8. JPE turns 90 on Valentine’s Day - and twists in the wind over pork barrel plunder raps.

“Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.” Writer Og Mandino’s line comes to mind on New Year’s Eve, as we rip down the 2013 calendar. Where did those 522,600 minutes go? we wonder when tacking up the 2014 edition.

“Raul” tops our Christmas Eve checklist. He’s a 55-year-old who collects empty bottles and scrap for a living. He looks 80 from having had one “altanghap” too many. That’s jargon for almusal (breakfast), tanghalian (lunch) and hapunan(dinner) crammed into one meal.

Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. scoffs at charges that he diverted his pork barrel 22 times to bogus nongovernment organizations. But spot reports and evening newscasts on scandal can smudge the significant.

Inquirer’s headline summed up the festering issue: “Some journalists had it coming, the probers say.” They were referring to the recent killings that victimized three Mindanao—no, not journalists—“block-timers.”

“Cartographic” - what? “Cartographic aggression” is shorthand for redrawing maps to gobble up territory, writes Australian Sinologist Geremie Barmé. And last week’s region-wide protests over Beijing’s clamping of new fishing access rules on disputed portions of the South China Sea is the latest edition.

“Mad is he?” King George II once snarled about one of his aides. “Then, I hope he’ll bite some of my generals.” It would also be daft if any official here tried to confiscate Korans from Filipino Muslims. Both law and practice buttress liberty of faith.

A church “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets” is preferable to a Church jittery about “going astray,” Pope Francis says in “The Joy of the Gospel” published Tuesday. Fear instead being locked within rules that make us “comfortable but harsh judges.”